


Apologies are Worthless

by dragonwriter24cmf



Category: Fruits Basket (Anime 2001)
Genre: Angst, Family Feels, Family Issues, Father-Daughter Relationship, Father-Son Relationship, Happy Ending, POV Alternating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-18 07:00:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21890134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonwriter24cmf/pseuds/dragonwriter24cmf
Summary: There are some things that can't be fixed with simple apologies. Some deeds, and some consequences, you just have to live with. Kazuma and Shigure both have to live with breaking their adopted kid's hearts. But sometimes...sometimes, love is enough, even if apologies aren't.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	1. Shigure POV

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Characters are not mine.

**Apologies Are Worthless**

**Shigure:**

He'd known, the instant Kazuma had told him of his plans. This was going to hurt. Hurt all of them. Kyo. Kagura. Kazuma. Himself. Even Yuki, much as the Rat might not want to admit it.

And Tohru. It was going to hurt Tohru. He couldn't even imagine what this was going to do to her. He'd put her in the path of difficult things, knew Akito had done so as well. Akito had tried, early on, to get Hatori to force Tohru away, either by his words, or by pushing the doctor to erase Tohru's memories for her own good, as he had once done with Kana. But this...this was going to hurt.

How long ago? How long, since he had told Tohru that he didn't intend to hurt her? He had meant it even then. God...he had meant it even when he'd taken her in, his heart wrenched by all that she had gone through. And now...a part of him wanted to warn her, to tell her, maybe even find an excuse to get her out of Kazuma's path. Even if it was a manufactured excuse.

And yet...Kazuma was right. This had to happen at some point. Unless Tohru could accept the worst of them, including the cat's curse, there was no chance for any of them. Including Tohru. He knew she'd never give up on them, that she genuinely wanted to help them. That she genuinely cared for all of them, all the Sohmas that she'd met. Even Hiro, who was quite honestly a brat when he was around her.

He heard Kazuma ask Tohru for a moment of her time, out in the garden. Heard Kazuma call Kyo and ask him to come outside for a moment. Heard the door to the back garden open and close. He wanted to turn away, wanted to plug his ears and hide his face. He didn't know if the urge came from fear, or from shame at what he was about to do, what he was about to let happen. In any case, he couldn't look away. In fact, as he heard Tohru shuffling around to go out, as he heard the raised voices in the garden, Kazuma and Kyo, heard Kyo's shouts, filled with hate and self-loathing, he found himself going to the window, leaning against it. Listening, as Kyo blamed Yuki for everything, as Kazuma chided him.

He heard Kazuma berate Kyo, telling him not to run, telling him he would lead him to discover the truth.

He saw it happen, all of it.

He saw Tohru step out on the porch. He saw Kazuma, the swift slap to the face that caused Kyo to flinch back, the quick yank as the martial arts master stripped the protective beads from his adopted son's wrist.

Saw Kyo fall to the ground, howling, as the change overtook him. Heard the anguished scream: “Don't look at me!” But he was looking, because he couldn't do anything else.

He saw Tohru, eyes wide in shock as she watched Kyo's transformation. Saw the shock hit her, the sight, the smell. Saw it as Kyo ran from her, bolting from the place where she stood, transfixed by what she had witnessed, the secret Kazuma had so forcibly revealed. He heard Kazuma's questions. Then she was running, running into the night.

He could see her fear, her pain, all the terrible emotions that hadn't quite caught up with her as she bolted. He knew, from past experience, that they'd catch her soon enough. The knowledge of that, of the shock it would be, was like a blow to his own gut. His heart was aching as Tohru disappeared into the rain, aching for this innocent girl he had allowed to see one of their darkest truths.

Then, he felt it. Akito, somewhere nearby. He had always been aware of the head of Sohma Family. The curse tied them together, and while he lacked Hatori's gift, he did possess some of his own. Like a dog, he was capable of sensing people he knew, and their moods. And now...he sensed Akito, a brooding, gleeful malevolence in the darkness. Knew that Akito had seen everything, and enjoyed it. Knew what Akito would do next, in a mood like this. Such a mood would have the head of the Sohmas following Tohru, to drive the knife home.

That drove him out into the rain. He had promised that he would not interfere with Kazuma. He could hardly deny Kazuma the right to place his hopes in Tohru, not after he had given the girl so many of his own burdens, little though she knew it. But Akito...Akito could destroy her. Akito had a way with words that could twist them, turn them into knives that could shred a soul, especially one as vulnerable as Tohru was right then. That...he couldn't let it happen. Not if it was in his power to prevent it.

He was too late. He found them, and he was too late. Akito was leaning over Tohru, and even in the gloom he could see the younger man was drenched. Could see the mocking smirk on his face. Akito had spoken. He didn't have to know what he'd said, to see the devastating results. The smirk, the sneer on Akito's mouth, the mocking 'Thanks to you, I'm completely soaked'...those were enough to tell him.

He watched the light of Akito's car play over Tohru. Deliberate, he knew, Akito showing him what he had wrought. Tohru, bedraggled, mud-splattered, doubled up over a tree root, leaning against it in a manner that looked utterly and completely broken, even without seeing her face.

He had thought it would hurt, but he hadn't been prepared. Anguish struck him, burned through him. “Tohru...I...”

What could he say? How could he even begin to cover this? He hadn't warned her. He hadn't prepared her. He hadn't done anything except watch this happen. She had asked him, more than once, if there was something that was needed. All he'd ever said was 'be yourself' and 'it's too soon to tell you'. And now...Kyo's transformation had shaken her to her core, and who knew what poison Akito had spewed into her ears, what words he had used to try and break her.

“I...I'm sorry.” Such meaningless words, in the face of such pain. And he had helped cause it. He had set her on this path, chosen to bring her into their world, convinced Akito to let her stay, even knowing the tragedies that had come before. Agony and shame seared through him, bringing him to his knees in the mud.  _ What have I done? _

“I...I thought...” He heard himself begin the broken apology, and stopped.

He thought...what? He thought it was right? He thought she could save them? He did, but...that scarcely mattered. He'd thought he could spare her? It wasn't true. He'd known that this, or something like it, was inevitable. He'd thought he could help her weather Akito's venom? He'd known better than that. He couldn't even protect his own family members.

He had to speak the truth. He owed her that. He felt his eyes stinging, his throat aching, as he bent forward. Not just kneeling, but begging. Even if she couldn't see him. His hands pressed into the rain soaked earth as the words ripped from his throat, an unbidden confession. “No...I knew. I knew.”

He had known he would hurt her. They would hurt her. Had known that, however accepting Akito seemed, he would try to destroy her. Had known he was using her, a last hope to save his family. Had known Akito would use her to encourage, then break the younger Sohmas. Had known that Akito would break her too, as a lesson, and for the sheer perverse joy of it, claiming it was a lesson in 'not meddling' with the Sohmas.

He had known. No matter how he lied to her, himself, or the others. He had known. And it hadn't stopped him. Not once.

There was no apology that could possibly cover this. Nothing. That knowledge was torture.

No apology, but...there was one thing he had to say.

“Tohru...please...let's end this!” Whether he meant the curse, or the silence that stretched between them in that awful moment, centuries of pain or simply this one terrible night, he didn't know. All he knew was that he was begging, begging as he had never pleaded with anyone in his life. Honest as he had never been with anyone else, letting his words and his tone reveal the pain and tortured misery he had hidden from her, the anguish and suffering that had driven him for so long. “End this!” he didn't care if she never spoke to him again, if she struck him, cursed him. Anything.

He looked up. Tohru was rising. Turned away from him.

Tears stung his eyes, and he let them fall. Mud and rain soaked him, his hair, his hands, his feet, drenched and stained his robes. He didn't care. “Please...I know it's hard...”

She was walking away, and he could not stop her. He bit his lip. Then wept the last words into the rain, to follow the staggering form. “I know it's painful...but you can.”

He couldn't tell, as she disappeared into the night, if she had heard him. She didn't acknowledge his words in any way.

Why should she? After what he had done, and not done.

He knelt in the rain, forehead and fists pressed into the mud, and wept. Wept for her. Wept for the Sohmas, his family, twisted and driven by the curse. For Akito's fury, and the innocents it damaged. For Kyo. For Yuki and Hatori. For Ayame and Kazuma and all the others.

He wept for Tohru,for the girl he had let be trapped in this web, for everything he had forced her to endure. Their secrets. Yuki's needs, Kyo's anger. His own carefully hidden insecurities and griefs. Kazuma's desperation. Hatori's pain, Ayame's soul-searching. All the burdens he had laid at her feet, or encouraged others to lay upon those young shoulders.

He wept for the burden of their family, placed in Tohru's arms in the slim hope that this child, who had come through so much and still smiled, who could touch his heart, would be able to support them.

He had thought, once, that he would apologize to her, when the time came. Had thought she'd get angry, or frightened, and that he would apologize and make amends. He knew better now.

There  _ was _ no apology he could make, nothing he could say, that would make this right. Nothing could erase the knowledge he had forced upon her, the pain she would go through, was going through, for the sake of the Sohma family. If she turned away from them, ran away from the Sohma house forever, he would deserve it. If he was forced to take her before Hatori, to suppress her memories to prevent the pain from destroying her, he would deserve both the agony of watching it happen, and Hatori's rage over it. If she never spoke to any of them again, never smiled at any of them, if she reviled them and turned her back on them, he would deserve it. If she raged and screamed and wept at him, as Kagura sometimes did, then he deserved every word, every blow, every scream and accusation.

He had never thought to find himself in a place where there was nothing he could say. Even in the blackest moments, trying to salvage Yuki's self-esteem, trying to nurse Hatori through the pain of his lost vision and his lost love, he'd had words. But here...explanations meant nothing, and apologies were worthless.

All he could do now, was wait. No matter what happened, Tohru would need help, eventually. Whether a miracle occurred, and she was able to embrace Kyo's true form, or not, she would return. Even if it was only to collect her belongings and leave them.

Whatever happened, he would support her, do his best for her. He owed her that much, at least. That knowledge dragged him out of the mud, sent him staggering back through the rain towards his house. He needed to be there for Tohru, no matter what the outcome of this night was.

He spent the sleepless hours in the agony of recriminations. Every time he closed his eyes, he felt the pain, saw the memories. Memories of laughter, of a bright, somehow innocent child who had come and changed all of them so much. Saw a broken form in the rain, weeping, wide shocked eyes filled with the beginnings of tears. Those few times he could drive away the memories, he spent in prayer, begging for a miracle. He didn't deserve it, he knew, but the prayer wrenched from him just the same.

It was dawn when he heard the footsteps in the yard. Heard Kazuma collapse in the mud. His chest was aching, heart pounding as he raced out to see the results of the night. He felt almost ill, afraid the risen sun would reveal a battered, broken child on his front step. A girl with haunted eyes, a broken silent orange-haired boy, or a wide-eyed and silver-haired youth who had simply seen too much and been unable to help.

Tohru was there, smiling, an orange cat cradled in her arms, purring. Behind her, Yuki walked, injured but at peace, contented, even smiling just a little.

He had received his miracle. Something, he didn't know what, and wasn't even going to begin to believe it was him, had been enough. Tohru had been enough, had loved them enough, had mustered enough courage. He found himself laughing, giddy with relief, too shocked to do anything but laugh hysterically into his hands, because if he didn't laugh he'd weep, and this was no time or place for tears.

He helped them into their rooms, helped Kagura tend to them. He half carried Tohru up the stairs himself, mindful of not getting too close. He looked at a sleeping child, and felt the awareness of the night reassert itself.

There was no apology he could make, for what he had done. For the pain he had put her through, nor what he had asked of her, kneeling in the rain. For the burdens he had forced her to bear. But he could, and would, from now on, support her, help her. He would be honest, no matter what it cost him. He would help her do whatever needed doing. For her sake, even if it broke him in the end.


	2. Kazuma POV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kazuma's thoughts on what happened that night.

He knew from the beginning, that there would be no apology that would possibly earn him forgiveness.

He knew what cruelty Kyo had endured because of his cat form. Akito's jeering. His mother's fear. The whispers that he had driven his mother to suicide. The collective shunning and disgust of the Sohma clan. His father's unreasoning hatred. All the rumors, the loneliness, the grief. And he knew that Kyo's second form was the symbol of all that torment and rage, the beads on his wrist the constant reminder of the nightmare inside, and his own inability to stop it, or to endure the burden it forced him to bear.

He had forced Kyo to face it. To endure the transformation and worse, endure the baring of all his secrets to Tohru. He had stripped away Kyo's safety. There was the possibility that he had destroyed his son's only hope for happiness. If Tohru could not accept what Kyo was, or if Kyo could not accept Tohru's answers, then everything would be destroyed.

He knew how difficult it was for people to accept the Cat. Even those who had some warning beforehand, those who knew of the unique curse of the cat, often recoiled in disgust when faced with the reality. And he'd given Tohru no such preparation. It had to be a shock. There was a chance it would prove an insurmountable one.

Likewise, even if Tohru could accept what she had seen, there was Kyo. He knew, no one better, how Kyo had suffered as a child. He had wakened his foster son from nightmares all too often. Listened to his grief over his mother, and the conflicted feelings her memory invoked. He knew well that Kyo's mother had often spoken words of love and protection, and yet hidden her own son. Had often spoken of love, but that her fear of her own child was whispered about as the cause of her suicide. Kyo had heard those whispers, and been poisoned by them. Had been twisted by the fear he had sensed, even as a young boy, under his mother's reassurances.

Tohru might accept Kyo, but unless she could convince Kyo that her acceptance wasn't the same as the meaningless platitudes the boy's mother had spoken, it would make no difference. Kyo would reject her, and the rest of them.

He might have destroyed his son, and even if he had not, there was no way Kyo could forgive him this transgression, this humiliation, this forced exposure. It was a cruelty worthy of anything Akito had ever done, and all the worse because he loved Kyo, and knew Kyo loved and trusted...had trusted, him.

Tears dripped down his cheeks, hidden and washed away by the rain that poured over his face as he held Kyo's beads. He tried to pray, but all that came was a tidal wave of memories.

Kyo's lonely grief, their first meeting. The cold whispers, that he had tried to silence by lifting Kyo above them, onto his shoulders. The wide world he had showed the boy. Their first karate lessons. Baths together. Laughter over meals, and his own abysmal cooking ability. The day Kyo had begun to call him Master, a title he spoke the way most children the word Father. Laughter in the sunlight. Smiles in a face that hadn't learned them until far too late in his young life. A sleeping child he had lovingly tended.

And anger. Kyo outrage when the Sohma's mocked him as the Cat's guardian. Kyo's rage whenever they encountered Yuki. Kyo's rejection of him, when the school had expressed disapproval of his parenting ability. A rejection centered around grief, around Kyo's fury at the mockery he endured as the Cat's guardian.

That rejection had hurt, but then he had known that Kyo was confused, hurting, and embarrassed for him. He had known that Kyo was rejecting him because he didn't want to embarrass him. This rejection though....

Kyo had every right to be angry now. Every right to turn from him. He could not possibly apologize enough. Kyo had already been angry, over his broken promise that they would live together. And with this act, he had betrayed every bond of fatherhood, or even mentor-ship, that he had formed with the boy.

He had taught Kyo of honor, of promises and honesty, of respect and trust, and he had betrayed his own teachings. Even if it was for the best, it was still a betrayal.

His heart ached, and he wept for what he had done. He had ignored Kyo's wish, the only thing Kyo had ever really asked of him. He had betrayed his son's secrets, and left him to bear the consequences, for good or ill.

If Kyo never spoke to him again, or even attacked him as he so often attacked Yuki, he would deserve it. He would deserve the silence, the coldness, the blows. And there was nothing he could do that would change that.

For now, all he could do was wait, the rain soaking him, and pray that his son would return, whole in mind and body. All he could do was pray that the young girl who had followed his son would be able to reach him, teach him, save him from himself and the darkness in his soul.

And so he waited. And allowed the memories to come, his penance paid in the torment of remembering all that he had betrayed this night, all that he had sacrificed on this one, slim hope that his child could be saved and given a better fate than the one he believed he would receive.

And the dawn finally came. And with it came Tohru, with an orange cat cradled in her arms, and a smile on her face, trailed by Yuki. They all looked exhausted, but it only required a glance for him to see what had happened.

His gamble had succeeded. Between them, Yuki and Tohru had saved his son. There were no guarantees concerning the future, but at least Kyo had a chance. A chance to break free of his prison of bitterness and self-loathing. A chance to grow, and find a new destiny for himself. A chance for happiness.

He helped Shigure put the children to bed, waited until Kyo transformed so that he could slip the beads over his son's wrist, then left. After all, there was no need to be there when Kyo awoke. His son did not need to see the father, the master, who had betrayed him. Kyo might understand that it had been done for his own good, but it was betrayal all the same, and no words would make it right. No apology could counteract his actions. He could only give Kyo space, and hope that one day his son would be able to look him in the face again without anger.

He was shocked when Kyo's shout reached his ears, and he turned to find his foster son pounding up the road toward him. Not as shocked when Kyo snarled at him and then attacked him. He had expected it, after all. It was only fair. Not that he would let the boy strike him, for Kyo would only be angered further if he did, but he was determined to weather the attack until Kyo's anger was spent.

He hadn't meant to counterstrike, but the boy nearly hit him and the reaction was instinctive. But he almost missed the next block. And even though he caught Kyo's fist, the words the boy spoke hit him far harder than the blow he'd not quite landed.

'Someday...someday, I'm gonna be the kind of guy my master can be proud to tell the world... “I'm his dad”!'

The words resonated through him, filled him with warmth, soothed the pain he felt in his heart.

Kyo had forgiven him.

He tripped Kyo up to get his attention, then smiled. “You are still quite the troublesome son.” And he saw Kyo's eyes light up with joy, with warmth and trust. Then he lifted his son from the dirt, brushed him off, and Kyo grinned an embarrassed grin and ducked back, and he understood.

Apologies were worthless. But love...love and acceptance could cover many things. And if Kyo could forgive him, then he could forgive himself.

He could not apologize, but he would do everything he could, to help Kyo find his way. No matter what obstacles they faced, he would be there to support his son.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just felt like he needed this.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little thing I wrote, kind of exploring how people felt. Started with Shigure, because he insisted on being heard.


End file.
